Do I need Protected? Isaiah 61:10-11, 62:1-3
1. God has clothed the People
• The text tells us that God has clothed us with garments of salvation
• The text says God has covered us with robe of righteousness
• God has clothed us with good and grand things such as garland, and jewels valuable garments.
2. God has provided these garments to protect us. Are they provided to protect us from God?
• Clothing protects us from the elements, storms, cold, heat, and God
• We forget that the Bible talks about the justice and judgment of God, Hebrews, tells us: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (10:31).
• Jesus told his disciples, they can kill you, but then what can they do? There’s nothing they can do to your soul, your core being. Save your fear for God, who holds your entire life — body and soul — in his hands” (Luke 12:4-5, The Message).
3. Why do these folks need protected?
• God has provided the garments of salvation and robes of righteousness for the whole people of Judah. Its the end of the Babylonian exile, they are back in the homeland and God says, “for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch.” God is intense about this.
• Why did the people need to be protectively clothed? Isaiah spoke of that coming disaster and captivity and said people would “enter the caverns of the rocks and the clefts in the crags, from the terror of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty, when he rises to terrify the earth” (Isaiah 2:21). But this disaster had already happened.
• They needed protective clothing to survive the brutal “weather” conditions of God’s presence.
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4. Do we really need protection from God?
• Remember when the people of Israel worshiped the golden calf and God punished them, Moses interceded for them with God. In that conversation, "God said they are a stiff-necked people. 10Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them.
• The notion that God is dangerous can also be seen in C.S. Lewis’ book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where the children Susan and Lucy ask about Aslan the lion [who represents Jesus]: “Is he safe?” Beaver replies, “Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
• Frankl who lived in tremendous fear while in the concentration camps WW11 writes after his release “there is nothing I need to fear any more — except My God” (emphasis added).
5. God gives us a choice to be Protected or not 62For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, God will pursue us
• Steven J. Cole, puts it, “His wrath is his settled opposition to all sin. His holiness requires that he must judge all sin.”
• God doesn’t force us to wear the garments of salvation and the robe of righteousness. God leaves it up to us to wear them — a freedom of choice, yes “freewill.” As Peter, in his second epistle, said, “The Lord is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
• God confronts us— either to accept Christ or not.
• God asks us to commit ourselves to Him. God simply will not be satisfied with less. There is no middle ground. And so the choice is ours.
